Lars Elling, Norwegian Painter

Thank you Nelson for referring me to this artist. I think I can call Lars my new favourite painter.

May 17th

Mastermind

Director's Cut

Conspiracy

Duck and Cover

The Interpreter

Night and Day

'Reality is blurred into dreamscape through a layered narrative. Elling's paintings are filled with melodramatic motifs that evoke childhood, nostalgia, cruelty and anonymity. These images derive from old magazine photographs, family snapshots or even reproductions of Old Masters and brilliantly explore the dramatic potential inherent in combining such familiar but disparate imagery. Elling is a master technician who makes his own paints by blending egg tempera with pure pigment and linseed oil, creating a viscosity of paint and quality of surface unique to him. The application, transparency and texture of the picture surface are of critical importance. His methodology involves rotating the canvas as he paints, thereby denying the conventional north / south, east / west axes that typically form the basis for figurative paintings and creating a spatial disorientation that verges on the abstract.'

'In Elling's large canvases, human bodies rarely take entirely conventional forms. Rather, their faces and limbs melt into nonfigurative elements-atmosphere, blurred colour, scrubbed-out regions of neutral tint-gesturing toward a broader horizon, nodding at persona and narrative while ultimately frustrating any drive toward coherence or story.'

http://www.thomaswilliamsfineart.com/exhibitions/41